


Doppelganger: An MCU Sebastian Stan and Bucky Barnes story

by GateKeeper2



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Action/Adventure, Actor Sebastian Stan, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky gets a new name, Chance Meetings, Doppelganger, Gen, Hope, Hydra (Marvel), Kidnapping, MCU Sebastian Stan, POV Bucky Barnes, POV Sebastian, Protective Bucky Barnes, SHIELD, Sebastian wants to help, Siberia, Trains, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, World Travel, acting is not real life, confused Sebastian Stan, romania - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-08-18 22:10:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20198983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GateKeeper2/pseuds/GateKeeper2
Summary: Bucky Barnes and MCU Sebastian Stan meet, Sebastian wants to help Bucky make a new life for himself in Romania, but they have to get there alive first.





	1. Meetings

2014

Night was falling in the Big Apple, the first hint of cool air was beginning to filter between the skyscrapers, carrying with it the scents of the city. Garbage mainly, mingled with street food, the exhaust of taxis, tour busses and sweaty tourists from the world over. Here and there the stink of weed floated out of alleyways.  
Just an ordinary summer evening as far as Sebastian was concerned.  
Life had in fact just settled down to its typical level of expected chaos. Fans he could handle, in fact, he loved to meet and talk with them, get to know their stories and stop for a photo. It wasn't like he was incredibly well known, not to the level of Hemsworth or even his pal Anthony who had played the role of Gabe Jones alongside him in a Howling Commandos biopic.  
He had played Bucky Barnes, the charismatic sergeant who always had Captain Rogers' back. It seemed like a dream then, though in the last few months it had unexpectedly caused him a lot of bother. Like a whole lot.  
Getting ambushed and tranq'd by Shield or Hydra or both? Whatever was left of them twice in a week had definitely caused an uproar in the media.  
Paparazzi, for once they were useful!  
He hadn't said anything personally, had been ordered by masked agents not to speak a word of it and not go about wearing fashionable bomber jackets in August.  
He had conceded the second time but darn it, he was trying to get into character! He had a spy movie he was scheduled to start filming in two weeks!  
So now he went about in a tank top. Apparently, the guy they were looking for who somehow looked so much like him that it had tripped Stark tech level facial recognition software twice had a metal arm. He definitely didn't have one of those and he was going to flaunt it everywhere. Sun's out guns out. Right? He turned the corner of a building and was met with… himself? 

“ Who the hell are you? Sebastian gasped, eyes widening in shock. His mirror man did not look shocked. He was blank-faced, eyes cold and calculating as he seized Sebastian’s shoulder with an iron-hard grip and forced him into the nearest alleyway.  
Sebastian tried to fight, tried to call out, and almost immediately wished he hadn’t. The hand moved from his shoulder to his throat before he could blink, effectively catching his voice in his throat as he was manhandled up against the rough brick wall. He tried again to fight, but it was like the man’s hand had become fused to the wall, there was no escape that route. He immediately went for a more underhanded approach, kicking the man in the groin, but that barely phased him. He had some kind of armor down there or something was wrong. Sebastian felt the hand tighten to an uncomfortable degree, he could feel his rapid pulse hammering past the obstructing hand as well as see it, dancing as dark specks before his eyes.  
“ Ok, I surrender. What do you want man? Money? I can get you on a plane out of the country if you want, just stop with the strangling…” Sebastian choked out. The man before him stopped staring at him so blankly, a flash of curiosity crossing his blue eyes.  
To his immediate relief, the man shifted his thumb, driving it back into the building with a crack. Sebastian went cold, any doubt he may have had left him in an instant. This was the man the agencies were looking for. And no doubt, he was definitely dangerous.  
Hand cold as ice, metal. The Winter Soldier.


	2. Captured

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sebastian is captured by the Winter Soldier, with the best intentions.

He had pinned the man with ease, rendering him harmless. He had kicked and struggled for a bit, but seemed now resigned to death or whatever else he could deliver. Weak. A civilian with his face, and a prominent civilian at that. He had watched the man for weeks, coming and going along the same route every day. He had seen the vans and the snipers with their darts, both Hydra and Shield take him down. The first time he thought the man would never come away free and had been almost disappointed to lose the mark with his face. A mark he had chosen and which he feared Hydra had taken away, like everything else. He wasn’t supposed to have these thoughts but he was destabilized, he had claimed autonomy as a man after a visit to the library to determine the condition of his anatomy. It was there that he had first seen the man with his face, later identified as Sebastian Stan, an actor. He needed to learn to act like a human, and the man with his face could provide that if he was willing. He would need to be gentle with this man and so far he had succeeded in not choking him out or breaking anything, even when he had received a kick to the groin. He studied the man as he babbled talk about money and his needing help. His interest was piqued at the man’s offer of a plane out of the country. That could come in handy. But first, he needed to learn to act. 

“ I need to learn how to act. If you teach me, I won’t hurt you.” Bargained the Winter Soldier. Sebastian jumped at the growl in his voice, primarily from disuse or screaming, he could not tell, but the strangest thing occurred to him. “The Winter Soldier looks like me and has my voice.” Then he spoke aloud, clearing his own throat from the compression it had suffered. “ I can help you, but why me? Who are you?”  
The Winter Soldier looked puzzled at this and shook his head. “ Will you help me?” He pressed, with voice and hand.   
“ Y-yes. I will just let me go and I can give you a quick-acting lesson and be on my way.” Sebastian explained, shifting his eyes back down the alleyway. Honestly, he was relieved he had survived up to this point. An unarmed actor against a trained assassin who had near about killed Captain America. He felt both terrified and strangely honored. He would see soon how well the plan he had thought up would work, surely the action scenes he had participated in had some measure of truth to them. The soldier nodded slightly, just a millimeter down and back up, his piercing eyes never leaving Sebastian’s as he pulled back his metal hand from the wall.   
That was it, Sebastian turned on his heels and bolted for the exit, breath coming in frantic pants, “Stay in character, left then straight then right. Don’t panic,” He thought, then the soldier caught his leg and pulled back, sending him crashing to the ground. He twisted painfully around and looked back at the glaring soldier who held him up, eyes widening in fear as the man produced a syringe and depressed it into the flesh behind his bare ankle. The soldier was silent and effective, setting him down on the damp, mucky cement as whatever he had been injected with did its work, whisking through his veins and deadening everything in its path until it reached his head and he blacked out. 

The soldier stooped down, shaking his head as he picked up the unconscious man. Why did everything about his new life have to be so difficult? He didn’t have to leave the alley to access the area he had taken to squatting in the last few weeks, there was an old abandoned apartment that he could easily access by climbing the fire escape. He swung the actor onto his back in a fireman’s carry and jumping, made his way up the stairs which folded down to meet him. Why the actor had chosen to make things difficult for both of them he did not know, because he was going to wake up with a hell of a headache and still owed him an acting lesson.  
The soldier set him down gently on the almost spring-bare, rust orange sofa and doubled back to lock the door and do a preliminary perimeter inspection.   
Everything was as it had been before, backpack in the corner, protein bars and water bottles in orderly rows, a seven day supply cut to four now that he had company. He couldn’t just let him go, this man with his face was his hope to become human again, he couldn’t risk losing him as well as himself.   
Weapons were stashed under the floorboards, he wouldn’t need them for now. As bad as getting him here looked, he had no intention of harming him. The windows were locked and barred for reasons unknown to him, but they would prove useful in keeping his hope in, at least until he could be convinced to help him. Though he felt he had probably taken a few steps back in trust, even when he had started at zero. He heard a steady moan and froze, glancing up at the man he noticed blood oozing from scrapes and probably more than a few pieces of embedded glass. The soldier cursed in Russian under his breath and hurried across the room to take the medical kit from his backpack. He came back and using the night vision scope of his rifle, set about cleaning and bandaging the scrapes on his bare shoulders and picking out the brown bottle glass. He had been sure to sweep the alley for foreign objects earlier in the day, but a drunk must have left his bottle in the way closer to evening while he had been patrolling the rooftop. He finished with a tetanus shot to the undamaged arm, couldn’t risk losing him to lockjaw, before grabbing a pair of handcuffs and securing him to the couch. This task done, he sat in the corner of the room disassembling and cleaning his handguns from memory alone, wishing bitterly he could remember more than that. The man on the bridge had said his name was James and Bucky, but James-Bucky was dead, the museum and every other source confirmed it. Or maybe he wasn’t dead, the actor shared his face, who was to say he wasn’t this Bucky? It was a question for another day, he was getting a headache and was still no closer to an answer. But maybe the actor would be able to explain later when he woke. He set the cleaned weapons aside and leaned back against the wall. No, he wasn’t going to hurt the actor, didn’t want to hurt anyone, but Hydra would if they got their hands on him, he would be the perfect bait. A personality to emulate and a purpose. They would program him to imitate the actor if they caught them both together. An actor is an important person, they get access to presidents and royalty, the public and are loved by all. What Hydra would do with him he didn’t want to know. He glanced at the clock hanging on the wall. In about three hours he would wake, confused but alive. All could be explained then.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sebastian wakes up and plans are made.

The hours ticked by, punctuated by the steady, rhythmic beats of the actor’s heart. The soldier focused, listening, and working to set his own breath and rhythm to that of the man before him. It was only when they began to speed up did the soldier know the man had awakened to the light of morning and was now feigning sleep.  
“ I know you are awake.” Said the soldier, who smiled crookedly when the actor flinched and cracked open an eye. The same color as his own. It was truly bizarre, and he was a cryogenically preserved super-soldier. They looked the same age, same height, though Sebastian was undoubtedly lighter, what with having a normal human’s muscle mass and a set of human arms to match. He gritted his teeth in pain. “ Headache?” asked the soldier, bursting the blister on an Advil. “ No, and keep away from me with whatever that is. I--” The soldier dropped the box in his lap and stepped away, returning with a water bottle. Sebastian looked down, aware by now that he was cuffed to the couch and none too happy about it, but the medicine looked store-bought and familiar enough to encourage him to accept the proffered water. They watched each other in silence for a time before Sebastian spoke, his headache and bandaged arms starting to hurt less.  
“ Okay, what do you want from me? I don’t want to push my luck here, I thought I was a goner yesterday… Oh God, it was only yesterday, right? I haven’t been out for longer?”  
“ It was only yesterday. Twelve hours ago I brought you here for our mutual benefit.”  
“ Mutual? I did not agree to this!” Sebastian growled, then bit his tongue.  
“ Can you agree that Hydra is an evil organization hell-bent on getting me back?” Asked the soldier, leaning forward, a serious look on his face.  
“ They had you?” Sebastian asked with a shudder. “ You didn’t volunteer for this? For that?” He asked, pointing to the soldier’s metal hand. The soldier snarled, then backed up, containing his anger. He had promised himself not to hurt the actor.  
“ No, I didn’t volunteer, least of all for this!” The soldier explained, slapping the metal arm with his haste to remove the soiled black jacket he wore. It reverberated twice and was silent but for the slightest whirring of internal mechanics. It was a prosthetic, Sebastian noted, following it up the length of his arm, from finger to shoulder to rope scarred chest.  
“ Oh my God. They did that to you? What kind of?”  
“ I don’t understand how it works, my memories are coming back, slowly. But those that I do so far, not pretty..” The soldier explained, looking down and away from the arm with a shudder.  
“ It’s okay, you don’t have to tell me. It’s gonna be alright you know.” Sebastian said, slipping into a more comforting tone.  
“ Is it? Because I can’t unsee my arm getting sawn off and this monstrosity branded on in its place. No matter how many times they wiped me, that always came back first.”  
“ Wait, hold on a second. Wiped you? What the hell does that even mean?” Sebastian asked, furrowing his brow in confusion and honestly feeling a little sick. “ How could they do that, who are these people? Do you have a name, do you remember it? How to these wipes work?” The soldier almost smiled at the actor, so eager to help him, but chose to answer anyway. And maybe he was being uncharacteristically chatty, but it was hard not to confide in the kind man who shared his face. Not when he had nothing but his own scrambled thoughts to pick through and which ran together like mud. Someone had to be the stable brain in this situation and he had chosen the actor to carry that burden. It took a special kind of mind to exist as so many people and still have an identity of one’s own. Surely he could carry one more life within him.  
“ A machine, a chair with electricity. I don’t know. I’d go in, something else would come out. I don’t know my name for certain, might be James, might be Bucky, might be Fred, might be Vanya or Yasha!” His voice broke and he punched through the floor in his frustration and hurt. A swarm of termites flew out of the hole around his fist. Sebastian yelped and tucked his legs up under him, pressing himself into the back of the couch. Breathing hard, the soldier pulled his fist from the floor and sighed, “ I have no clue. I know I used to have a name, before this.” He said, gesturing at the arm in disgust. “ After, I was just called The Asset, file 17, pod #4, Hydra’s fist.”  
Sebastian shook in anger and sought to lay a hand on the troubled soldier, the man with no name. He no longer saw the Winter Soldier, undoubtedly another name he didn’t choose for himself, he saw a broken man, but not one incapable of being healed. He had always wanted to be able to help somebody, well now was his chance. He knew that Hydra was dangerous, had read about them in high school after he had come to the states. He wasn’t into comics, they hadn’t had any when he was growing up in Romania.  
Romania! That was where the soldier should go. His eyes had brightened when he had offered a plane ticket, though he didn’t know how he would get there, how they would get there. He was apart of this crazy adventure now, for better or worse. “To the end of the line,” his mind imputed, a simple line, he had said it in character as Bucky Barnes, before charging over a heavily CGI’d trench. But now, standing in front of the man, his doppelganger from another time, it was surreal and the scripted line felt shallow.  
“ Hey. So I was thinking. How about you let me off this couch and we can discuss our plans.” Sebastian asked. The soldier threw him a dubious look. He couldn’t be serious, he had tried to run away yesterday. A man’s intentions cannot turn that fast, could they?  
“ We can discuss them right here, thank you and no.” The soldier replied. Sebastian sighed a laugh, “ Fine, be that way soldier, but I think you’re gonna like this plan.” 

“ You’re going to drive me to Alaska and then we’re going to take a train across Siberia… Are you kidding me? You’re supposed to be a good backup brain here and you thought of that?” The soldier exclaimed, but without any heat. In fact, he seemed to be almost enjoying bouncing ideas off of Sebastian and vice versa. In the period of their hour’s discussion about plans, Sebastian had been freed and they had discussed half a dozen ways of getting to Romania. The current option was the most far-out there reply the soldier had ever heard. “ Well, I don’t know what to say, there are only so many ways to get to Romania Buck, legally or otherwise.” The soldier tensed at the name and Sebastian knew immediately he had said the wrong thing. It was crazy, the man used the same expressions in the same way he did. “ What do you want to be called? I don’t want to call you soldier forever just to not get a negative response, but Bucky is too delicate?” The soldier sighed.  
“ Or you can have many names. You said you wanted to be an actor, correct? Well, we have to go by many names, s’kinda part of the job description. I’ve been called, Jack, Jefferson, T.J…”  
“ And James Buchanan Barnes, alias, “Bucky” You are Bucky, not me.” The soldier replied, again looking at his arm. “ Not anymore, don’t know if I ever was.”  
Sebastian put his hand on the metal shoulder, lightly, watching the blood-red star shift slightly with the plates, like the arm itself were shrugging hopelessly. Then an idea struck him, they were going to Romania, why not create a new identity there. “ Stea,” Sebastian said with a smile. The soldier looked uncertain, weighing the pros and cons of such a name, but the more he thought of the significance of the word the more he agreed. “ Stea.” He replied, a smile pulling at his lips. “Stea, star, blaze, fate, destiny. Warmth and hope. The... opposite of Winter.”  
“There is just one problem, Stea. I’m an actor as you know and I have a project set to film in two weeks. I’m supposed to be the main protagonist in a spy feature. We have to work out a time table on this.” Sebastian admitted, still seeking to help but well aware his career was on the line.  
“Can’t you tell them your busy? We have no idea what we may come across out there, you are proposing we travel across the whole of the U.S. and Russia, both countries are sure to be swarming with Shield and Hydra agents and I’m in no mood to question who’s who. Both want me dead or captured for their own purposes.” Stea replied, already moving about the room and stuffing gear into his backpack, they had no time to lose if they were to get ahead of Hydra.


End file.
